‘Add-in Express for Office and .net’ category archive
Create Office add-ins with Visual Studio 2012 Express
Dmitry Kostochko | April 9th, 2013
Today I am going to break our long-time tradition of announcing major version releases only with the announcement of the new minor update of Add-in Express for Office and .net. "What is special about this build?" you may ask me. Well, I have the answer. Apart from minor improvements and bug fixes the new build (7.2.4055) adds support for Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop... Read the rest of this entry →
Excel 2013 add-ins in Visual Studio 2012: Getting started for VSTO developers
Pieter van der Westhuizen | April 8th, 2013
In this article we'll have a look at how you, as a VSTO developer, can get started developing add-ins for Excel using Add-in Express and Visual Studio 2012.... Read the rest of this entry →
Outlook Object Model: 4 things developers might not know
Ty Anderson | April 5th, 2013
Today, I will cover 4 topics of Outlook development tasks that are not commonly known or mainstream. You can argue about how well known each task is but you will lose. These tasks are not commonly known because you don't always need them. They are beyond the basics. But, if you master them, you can look upon other Outlook developer with a snooty little smirk... Read the rest of this entry →
Enterprise development of Office solutions with Add-in Express
Ty Anderson | March 29th, 2013
Microsoft Office based solutions take various forms and sizes. What began with the ability to write (and record) scripts to automate Office documents on a user's desktop has evolved to the ability to create full-fledged extensions. These extensions often work across multiple apps in the Office suite and expand beyond a single user's desktop.... Read the rest of this entry →
Outlook 2013 add-ins and Visual Studio 2012: Getting started for VSTO developers
Pieter van der Westhuizen | March 28th, 2013
Today we'll focus on how developers, coming from a Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) background, can get started developing add-ins for Outlook 2013 using Add-in Express and Visual Studio 2012 (C#, VB.NET or C++.NET).... Read the rest of this entry →
Range Selection in Excel add-ins – other good manners for developers
Eugene Starostin | March 22nd, 2013
In my yesterday's article I started to muse on Excel's Range Selection and what can be considered good practices for Excel add-in developers. Well, there are some other good manners for the Range Selection. And if you have a closer look at the user interface of Microsoft Excel itself and some popular Excel add-ins, you will find out pretty convenient behavior of the Range Selection functionality like follows below... Read the rest of this entry →
Range Selection in Excel add-ins – good manners for developers
Eugene Starostin | March 21st, 2013
Having been fully absorbed in developing our frameworks for a while, I lost any connection with the other part of our business - ablebits.com. Doh, I shouldn't have allowed this to happen. I clearly realized that on last Saturday evening when, to the wailing of snow storm Xavier raging across this country, I installed the latest version of the Excel Ultimate Suite on my laptop... Read the rest of this entry →
Office 2013 add-ins & Visual Studio 2012: Getting started for VSTO developers
Pieter van der Westhuizen | March 18th, 2013
So you've been using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) for some time now and luckily you've discovered a better and easier way to develop Office add-ins, namely Add-in Express. Ready to start a new happier life of creating awesome Office Outlook extensions you excitedly fire up Visual Studio and hit File, New Project... Read the rest of this entry →
Excel 2013 single document interface (SDI): How to rebuild your task panes to support it
Pieter van der Westhuizen | February 28th, 2013
If you're an avid user of Excel, you would've noticed that Excel 2013 has moved from being a Multi document interface (MDI) application to being a Single document interface (SDI) application... Read the rest of this entry →
Excel 2013 Timeline: creating data visualizations with VB.NET, C#
Ty Anderson | February 12th, 2013
Now that Microsoft Office 2013 is available, it's time to start digging through the "What's New for Office Developers" topics. I'm not sure where these topics will take us because, with each release of Office, Microsoft touts the various new features and objects available to developers... Read the rest of this entry →
How to preserve the ribbon control state (or, if you develop custom Outlook ribbons…)
Ty Anderson | January 30th, 2013
If you decide to build an Outlook add-in, you're going to want to customize the user interface. If you start customizing the Outlook user interface, you'll probably build a custom ribbon. If you build a custom Outlook ribbon, you'll want to put some controls on it like a button that toggles, a checkbox, and a drop down control
... Read the rest of this entry →
How to dynamically bind Outlook add-in UI elements to the context
Pieter van der Westhuizen | January 29th, 2013
Something that I've noticed is that if you want to really start bending Microsoft Outlook to your programming will, you need to start embracing and combining the use of message classes and content types when developing Outlook add-ins... Read the rest of this entry →
Creating custom Outlook forms in C#, VB.NET: Outlook 2013 and 2010 form examples
Pieter van der Westhuizen | January 21st, 2013
Part of the allure of customizing or even adding your entire application inside Outlook is the ability to add your own .Net forms inside the Outlook Explorer and Inspector windows. In this article I'll show you how easy it is to create your own custom Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010 forms using Add-in Express for Office and .net... Read the rest of this entry →
Creating a shared ribbon for Office 2013: Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Ty Anderson | January 17th, 2013
In this article, I want to show you how can create single Microsoft Office 2013 and 2010 ribbon and share it with Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. This scenario is one of many where Add-in Express shines. Using the Add-in Express framework, you can easily build a shared ribbon in a matter of minutes. Best of all, you can also quickly configure your controls to display (or not to display) in the Office host applications your add-in targets... Read the rest of this entry →
Customizing Outlook 2010 and 2013 Ribbon tabs, buttons, groups: C#, VB.NET
Ty Anderson | January 14th, 2013
The Ribbon revolutionized the Office user interface when originally introduced in Office 2007. Using Visual Studio's out-of-the-box tools, you can build custom Ribbon's for your solutions. BUT… Microsoft provides visual designers for a small subset of ribbon controls. Meaning, you will need to write lots of XML to complete your customization
... Read the rest of this entry →
How to create custom Outlook rules and execute them programmatically: C# example
Pieter van der Westhuizen | December 13th, 2012
The Microsoft Outlook Rules is a very powerful feature that can sometimes get lost amongst the myriad other features and abilities of Outlook. Many Outlook programmers do not realise that Microsoft introduced a new rules object model in Outlook 2007 allowing developers to harness the power of Outlook rules... Read the rest of this entry →